Cocaine lab found in Honduras signals big shift in drug business

[Judi Lynn]

Posted on Friday, April 8, 2011
Cocaine lab found in Honduras signals big shift in drug business
By Tim Johnson | McClatchy Newspapers

SAN PEDRO SULA, Honduras — Counter-narcotics agents in Honduras discovered a major cocaine-processing complex last month tucked in mountainous triple-canopy jungle near the border with Guatemala, a worrisome sign that Colombian drug lords are shifting their operations to the weaker countries of Central America.

The jungle complex was the first large drug-processing laboratory found north of South America's Andean region, and it signals a major change in the cocaine business. Traditionally, the industry has processed leaves from coca plant in hidden labs in Colombia, then shipped the cocaine to North America and Europe.

Now, however, some traffickers are shipping semi-refined coca paste, or cocaine base, to Honduras, where it goes through the final processing into white powder, police officials think.

"This is a red flag that Honduras is turning into a processing center," said Honduran Security Minister Oscar Alvarez, who led the raid March 9 by some 200 agents to the hidden camp near remote coffee farms on Cerro Negro, a hill several hours to the west of this industrial city.

More:
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/04/08/111870/cocaine-lab-found-in-honduras.html

Time to militarize Honduras, again? Just like the 1980's, when Reagan was out to get "commies?"

[Peace Patriot]

1. Well, it's interesting. I was deciding how best to describe my skepticism about this article.

And what occurred to me first was to simply substitute "communists" for "traffickers," thus...

---

"SAN PEDRO SULA, Honduras — Anti-communist agents in Honduras discovered a major communist jungle camp last month tucked in mountainous triple-canopy jungle near the border with Guatemala, a worrisome sign that South American communists are shifting their commie operations to the weaker countries of Central America.

"The jungle complex was the first large communist camp found north of South America's Andean region, and it signals a major change in communist strategy. Traditionally, the communists limited their ambitions to electing commie governments in South America then infiltrated commie ideas to North America through limited but focused cells in Central America.

"Now, however, some communists are concentrating on electing commie governments closer to the U.S. border, anti-commie authorities say.

"'This is a red flag that Honduras is turning into a center of commie activity," said Honduran Security Minister Oscar Alvarez, who led the raid March 9 by some 200 agents on the commie camp near Cerro Negro, a hill several hours to the west of this industrial city.'" --riff on the OP by Peace Patriot

---

I imagine that the template for this war profiteer propaganda piece, from McClatchy News Services, can be found in the 1980s archives of almost any corpo-fascist news service. They just had to dig it out and substitute "traffickers" for "communists."

And it's interesting that one of the 2009 coup generals in Honduras said that their coup was intended "to prevent communism from Venezuela reaching the United States." (--quoted in a report on the coup by the Zelaya government-in-exile). So my "communist" version ain't so out-of-date.

But I decided to simply say that, a) the details of the cocaine processing plant may be true (not certainly but probably true), and b) everything else in the article is a lie.

The purported anti-drug operations in Colombia, funded by the Bush Junta with $7 BILLION in our tax money, had NOTHING to do with stopping the cocaine traffic. Their purposes were (in what order I don't know): 1) Consolidating the trillion dollar-plus cocaine trade into fewer hands and directing the profit to the Bush Cartel, the CIA and U.S. banksters; 2) MURDERING thousands of trade unionists, teachers, community activists, human rights workers, journalists, peasant farmers and others, and driving 5 MILLION peasant farmers from their lands, in bloody prep for U.S. "free trade for the rich"; and 3) militarizing and brutalizing Colombian society and using it as a base for Pentagon war planning throughout the region.

The U.S. supported/funded fascist coup in Honduras has the same purposes, and the corrupt, murderous, failed U.S. "war on drugs" in Mexico has similar purposes--creating murder and mayhem to get control of the lucrative hard drug trade and to prevent decent government so that U.S. multinationals can rape and plunder the country.

One other purpose of the corrupt, murderous, failed U.S. "war on drugs": Supplementary funding (and in-between-wars funding) for U.S. war profiteers.

[Judi Lynn]

2. Amazing so much has happened to bring CIA involvement in cocaine, etc.

to the public's attention, including the "suicide" of the award-winning reporter who made the firt big inroad in reporting on it, you'd think more people would have become aware of it by now.

Luckily the politicians can depend upon ignorance, and indifference, since it doesn't personally involve most people, yet.
Don't know, don't care.

Your riff was excellent. All that has changed since the "Cold War" is the change of terms for the poor people they intend to suppress in order to retain control of countries, governments, and lives, all actually none of their damned business.